Cheech & Chong on Colorado crash course

Comic duo's "Up in Smoke" tour with the band War coming to Broomfield's 1stBank Center

Add stoner heroes Cheech & Chong to the list of weed-friendly comedians visiting the Mile High City in recent months.

The comedy duo, famous for their drug humor on numerous albums and in films of the 1970s and ’80s, will headline Broomfield’s 1stBank Center on March 22 with musical act War — which penned Cheech & Chong’s de facto theme song “Low Rider.”

The “Up in Smoke” tour, named after Cheech & Chong’s 1978 film, “promises to be the smokiest night of the year featuring all of your favorite War hits and all of Cheech & Chong’s outrageous and hilarious comedy and hit records,” according to the tour’s press release.

So will fans be able to openly smoke pot at the show?

Nope, despite the growing number of “4/20-friendly” comedy shows in Colorado. The Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, which was passed in 2009 to ban cigarette smoking at public venues and bars, was amended last year to include cannabis smoking. But that likely won’t stop some fans from lighting up, as has been the custom at many rock concerts for decades. (Show promoter AEG Live Rocky Mountains did not respond to a request for comment.)

Cheech & Chong are no strangers to the Front Range, having played the Paramount Theatre and the Boulder Theater in recent years, and their timing could hardly be better, given the newly-legal recreational cannabis industry in Colorado. Tommy Chong is also a well-known pot activist who served nine months in jail from 2003 to 2004 for selling cannabis paraphernalia over the Internet.

Tickets for the March 22 “Up in Smoke” tour stop are $39.99-$99.50 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 7 via altitudetickets.com.

John Wenzel writes about comedy, music, video games, books, film and other popular culture as an A&E reporter for The Denver Post. He is the author of the Speck/Fulcrum nonfiction book "Mock Stars" and has contributed to Rolling Stone, Esquire,...